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Monday, April 9, 2012

More on this attendance thing, or lack thereof

Look, I know it was nice outside yesterday in Houston. And I also know it was Easter. But I'm still baffled by how only 14,195+ people show up for a Sunday game - the third game of the season. So let's see some things about attendance.

*Amazingly, yesterday's Astros/Rockies game was not the worst-attended game of the day in the Majors - 10,518 showed up for the Toronto @ Cleveland game (but it was 51 and windy at Whatever The Stadium Is Called). 14,738 were at the Minnesota @ Baltimore game.

*Average attendance among 14 games yesterday was 25,706.

*Average attendance in April 2011 was 25,257. Factor out Opening Day, and average April attendance in 2011 was 24,205. The 2nd/3rd games of this Rockies series averaged 19,075.

*Average Sunday attendance in 13 Sunday home games at Minute Maid Park in 2011 was 24,773 - 10,195 higher than yesterday's paid attendance.

So the Astros have a real problem. I thought attendance would be down, but not like what we saw yesterday. That said, if the Astros can continue playing hard, win more than they did last year, and run enough promotions, then things can bounce back - but the early returns do not look good.

3 comments:

We probably lost some fairweather fans and some might still be angry because of the AL move but I think its mostly because there are so few familiar Astros. Lots of fans came to see the likes of Berkman, Oswalt and Pence but with a roster of relative unknowns, many fans don't see a face for the Astros today. The die-hards are who are being counted in attendance during the week. I will be there on Tuesday.

After we start playing consistent winning baseball, the fans will come back to see what all these rookies are doing. Then, by that time maybe a couple of these young men will have emerged as the new faces of the Astros. So, we will have a winning team and an identity.

Thanks for the article, James.I agree with RyanScott81 that this is a faceless team to a majority of the city of Houston. I would guess that the average person on the street would be as likely to identify a SugarLand Skeeter as much as an Astro, except maybe Lee and Wandy. There's not much to be emotionally invested in, plus they are, as far as we know, still really, really bad.

I'm supposed to hear Kathleen Clark speak Wednesday at a luncheon about how they plan to win back fans. I am really curious to hear their strategy.

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